We have the best customers and we feature them regularly on our blog and Facebook. Are you a ShipWorks customer and do you have a story to share? We want to hear it!

Who is SunBelt Products & Deal Dreaming?

The Sunbelt Products and Deal Dreaming websites were created by Mike Wilson approximately less than 2 years ago. They sell a variety of merchandise with the primary focus on daily deal promotions.

Although the sites are less than two-years old, they have seen remarkable results in a short period of time. They are on pace to do an impressive $2.4 million in sales this year.

Why ShipWorks & SkuVault?

“Our processes used to be very manual and slow,” said Mike Wilson, CEO of Sunbelt Products and Deal Dreaming. Before implementing ShipWorks approximately 18 months ago, it required two people to send approximately 100 packages a day. Prior to implementing SkuVault in the warehouse, Mike and his team of 3 people had challenges with inventory, picking and packing.

“I can’t even begin to explain how good it has been with ShipWorks and SkuVault,” said Mike. SkuVault and ShipWorks are fully integrated and complement each other. SkuVault is a warehouse inventory system that processes every item as it comes into the warehouse; this allows warehouse workers to receive orders and real-time quantity updates, all in one convenient system. Picklists are printed and grouped together by location so that warehouse workers are able to pick and pack orders efficiently. ShipWorks completes the process by automating tasks such as printing shipping labels, sending tracking information to the buyer, providing shipping insurance, and updating the online status of each order.

What are the results?

“Because of ShipWorks and SkuVault, we have been able to print, pick, pack, and send over 2,000 orders in one day with just three employees,” said Mike. “Since we are daily deal heavy, we need to be able to send 200 orders one day and 2,000 the next. ShipWorks saves us approximately 20 hours a week, and SkuVault saves us about 10 hours a week. But when both are integrated, they add an extra 10 hours of savings. That’s a total of 40 hours saved a week.”

Mike continues to find ways to streamline and improve their process using ShipWorks and SkuVault. A recent process improvement made it possible to print 170 shipping labels for 35 different items from four different online stores with only one click. Thanks to new warehouse efficiencies, Mike and his team are able to ship those 170 items in 10-15 minutes, instead of the 1.5 hours it used to take.

“If you took SkuVault and ShipWorks away from our company and we went back to our old ways, I would need to hire five more full time employees to cover the work,” said Mike. “I always tell small businesses that are in a similar position to where we were a few years ago to hire software, not another employee. My only wish is that I would have launched both systems earlier and that would likely have caused us to grow even faster.”

Was the integration easy?

“I knew about ShipWorks for months but kept putting the launch off because I thought there would be a learning curve,” said Mike. “I was wrong. Integration was easy and after I launched, I couldn’t believe I waited that long. With SkuVault, I was actually out of town when we launched it, and everything went great. That’s how easy it was for us.”

Any parting comments?

“The customer service at both companies is fantastic,” said Mike. “I feel like I am friends with the people at SkuVault and ShipWorks who have helped us. Being a small company, we do not have an IT department so the customer service has saved us hundreds of hours.”